Patricia Kopp

It's very unfair that he can't win the Fields Medal for this achievement in mathematics since he's over 40 years old.

🗣️ “Dems Need Better Messaging”

😒😒😒😒😒😒😒😒😒😒😒😒😒

Why The Shelves Aren’t Empty (Yet) Spare a thought for economists who now have to read Trump’s mind to model their projections.

ABP... Always Be Podcasting.

This time, a nice long chat about -- *holy cow there's a lot going on* -- with my friends at Slate's What Next pod.

Let my soothing dulcet tones lull you to sleep (or greater economic insight), here: slate.com/podcasts/wha...

The Admin is handling tariffs like a grad student assembling Ikea furniture: started keen, got partway through, lost the instructions, and half-formed tariffs are scattered everywhere. After weeks of inaction, Customs is meant to collect unannounced tariffs in just a few days.

BTW, I actually think there's a reasonable argument for the Fed cutting rates. But this is literally the opposite of that argument.

If your argument for cutting rates is that the economy is at full employment, the only counter argument needed is to explain what the words "full" and "employment" mean.

Worth remembering that the single best day for markets under President Trump occurred when he walked back his tariff war.

Thailand and Cambodia Reach Trump Trade Deals, U.S. Official Says Senior officials from both countries said they were still waiting to hear final details on the deals after comments by the U.S. commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick.

“I have a trade deal with Cambodia” seems to be the trade equivalent of “I have a girlfriend in Canada.” The text of the deal with two signatures is just as elusive as the photo of the loving couple together.

Wearing my "I waited 90 days, then another 24 days, and all I got was this lousy number in a spreadheeet" t-shirt.

"deals" are out. they're not even letters.

* except China
** also Mexico
*** we might also raise tariffs on Canada again
**** also, sectoral tariffs will keep changing

Trump's tariffs will go into effect:
̶A̶p̶r̶i̶l̶ ̶2̶
̶A̶p̶r̶i̶l̶ ̶9̶
̶J̶u̶l̶y̶ ̶9̶
̶A̶u̶g̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶1̶
̶A̶u̶g̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶7̶
̶w̶h̶e̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶e̶ ̶d̶o̶ ̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶h̶o̶m̶e̶w̶o̶r̶k̶
... and no extensions will be granted.

Firing the BLS Commissioner — the wonk in charge of the statisticians who track economic reality — is an authoritarian four alarm fire.

It will also backfire: You can't bend economic reality, but you can break the trust of markets. And biased data yields worse policy.

Nothing makes sense, but I'll add this anyway...

When preliminary payrolls numbers overestimated job growth under Biden—and were later revised down—Trumpland claimed this was the BLS trying to prop up the President.

Today he interprets it as the BLS is trying to undermine him.

I'm currently in Tokyo for an international conference, and by jingo did I pick a week to be away. The time zones here have me sleeping during the American day, and I just woke up from a jetlag-afflicted sleep to a *very* different U.S. economy.

It feels like something just cracked.

Folks who won't be fooled by politicized official economic statistics:
- The Fed
- The bond market
- The stock market
- Foreign investors

Folks who will be flying blind in the absence of reliable econ data:
- All of the above
- Small biz
- Big biz
- Voters

I see real reasons for concern.

What my kids school assignment (and Bayesian logic) teaches us about Trump's trade deals.
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

He's promising to protect the integrity of the data by firing statisticians who follow established methods of data collection and processing whenever those methods yield numbers that don't please the boss.

Opinion | Why Trump’s Meddling in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Matters Most children learn at some point that flipping the board doesn’t make them the winner.

“The deeper risk is cynicism, the quiet corrosion of faith in institutions. If we can’t believe the numbers, how do we believe anything?”

I’ve been critical of Schumer’s social media. But this—& the procedural moves that triggered Trump—is outstanding.

…again, they’re parasites feeding off the party, it’s a problem, I want them wiped out, but the party isn’t supporting them, they’re feeding off of the party

bsky.app/profile/dana...

Abbott was OK with Cancun Cruz.

There could be a problem with that:

I am much less pessimistic than Philip (Trump’s first term tariffs were mostly on China and much smaller, 2nd term is mostly not-China tariffs that are less politically popular and more obviously deleterious) but he’s right that there will be a temptation to keep tariffs that must be avoided

lol, lmao even

Feel like its a bad sign about the health of the republic that Pritzker has to talk about TX Dems like they’re the Polish government-in-exile in London

Immigrants are leaving the US workforce in very large numbers.

Remittance payments US→MX plummeting, down 2+ million from a year ago.

Biggest decline in >30 years - a period that includes a homebuilding depression and a 100-year financial crisis.

This is true but it’s important to emphasize that the 301 tariffs are a relatively small share of the total.

from someone in that there drug development industry i can tell you the even funnier part about all these stupid supplements is a lot of them are failed pharmaceuticals that bombed entirely in clinic but have a completely benign toxicity profile.